Darlington Raceway.
Whether you know the facility as the Lady in Black or the Track Too Tough To Tame, NASCAR fans the world over recognize the circuit as the most arduous on the NASCAR calendar.
The sport rides a wave of momentum after last week’s trip to Kansas City where Kyle Larson and Chris Buescher duked it out in Overtime, producing the closest finish in NASCAR Cup Series history.
A fantastic race that featured 27 lead changes found itself delayed over three hours by rain that popped up in the area on race day, but that didn’t affect the action at all.
Ross Chastain and Denny Hamlin joined Larson at the front in stage 1, swapping the lead amongst themselves before Hamlin took home another stage victory. Much of the second stage was spent watching the battle for the lead yet again, but this time, Buescher jumped in as Chastain’s Busch Light Crocs Chevy began to fade.
After a string of cautions to start stage 3, strategy entered the conversation as teams pitted their cars under different caution periods, putting multiple contenders in danger of not going the distance on fuel.
Hamlin and Buescher commanded the field for much of the final stage, but with the laps winding down, the top-2 took their feet off the gas pedal to conserve their remaining fuel load.
As Martin Truex Jr. passed Buescher and set his sights on Hamlin, the caution flew with seven laps left on the board, bringing every driver on the lead lap to pit road.
The #11 car controlled the restart with the #17 to his outside, yet as soon as the leaders hit the start-finish line, Larson sailed his #5 car onto the apron, getting a fender alongside the man he lost to the previous week.
Larson and Hamlin slowed each other down, allowing Buescher to scoot away for a moment before that familiar HendrickCars Camaro filled up Buescher’s rearview mirror.
The Castrol Edge Ford held off Larson for a lap-and-a-half before entering turn 3 for the final time. Taking the middle line, Buescher gave Larson the option to take his pick.
Where do you think Kyle Larson went? The high side.
Buescher made passing his car extremely difficult, forcing Larson to use every inch of race track possible to keep moving forward.
Off of turn 4, Larson door-slammed Buescher and slammed Buescher another time for good measure before diving for the finish line. Buescher on the apron looked to claim the victory, but after further review, Larson claimed his second race win of 2024 by .001 (one one-thousandth of a second.)
To recap, this season has seen finishes of .003 (Atlanta Cup race), .002 (Texas Xfinity race), and now .001 (Kansas Cup race.) It took the Cup Series 13 years to create a finish resembling the iconic duel between Ricky Craven and Kurt Busch at Darlington in 2003.
By some divine coincidence, Darlington happens to be the venue of our next event, the Goodyear 400. This is the fifth time this event has been held after Darlington’s second date was wiped off the calendar after 2004.
Kevin Harvick reached a barren victory lane at Darlington in May 2020, the first sporting event since the pandemic hiatus that began earlier that year. Since then, there have been no repeat winners of this event.
Darlington Raceway is NASCAR’s original superspeedway. Debuting in 1950, the banking of the track wasn’t meant to be a racing surface at all; it was intended to keep cars from spinning off of the track and into spectator sections behind the turns.
Hebron, Indiana’s Johnny Mantz scored the inaugural victory in the Southern 500 piloting a Plymouth owned by Hubert Westmoreland while David Pearson’s 10 wins at Darlington put the NASCAR legend at the top of the record book.
The formation of Darlington Raceway has been told and retold on multiple occasions, a minnow pond behind the backstretch resulted in track owner Harold Brasington shaping the course like an egg, creating two unique corners with variable banking.
What is now the frontstretch was the backstretch until 1997, making the steep and sweeping corner the new turns 1 & 2 and reclassifying the sharper, flatter corner as turns 3 & 4.
Standing at a hulking 25°, turn 1’s narrow entry opens up into a wide turn where drivers saw on the wheel, riding as close to the wall as possible before diving down towards the apron to exit the equally narrow turn 2.
Drivers then rocket down the backstretch until swinging into the treacherous turn 3. Sharper than the other end of the circuit, the slightly flatter turns 3 & 4 require drivers to be patient with the throttle before slipping back onto the frontstretch to complete the lap.
The track is considered an intermediate, measuring in at 1.366 miles. Notorious for its tire wear and close-quarters racing, experienced “dancers” know how to keep up with the Lady in Black the best while she feasts on the young and arrogant.
Now that we’re all caught up on the track, let’s swing over to the weather and fast facts.
The Weather & Fast Facts
While I swung and missed on last week’s forecast, I am certain there is a 0% chance on Sunday afternoon for the NASCAR Cup Series race.
Weather this time of year hovers between the high-70s and low-80s, and today lands right above average at 81°F that should last through the end of the event
The Track Too Tough To Tame intimidates drivers into mistakes, creating the dreaded Darlington Stripe on the right sides of race cars driven past the brink.
Tight racing and a narrow track surface produce a fever of yellows throughout the races, averaging 9 cautions for 48 caution laps since 2014.
One of America’s most peculiar-shaped courses, Darlington forces drivers to search for speed, whether it be on the apron or flirting with disaster by the outside wall. The differing lines create a fantastic racing product, leading to averages of 17 lead changes and over 2100 green-flag passes.
Overtime reared its ugly head toward the end of last year’s event, but that was the first Overtime appearance at Darlington in nine years. More often than not, these races end on a long green-flag run.
Speaking of the green flag, the race kicks off at 3:12pm Eastern time on FS1 for 293 laps over 400 miles with stage breaks at lap 90 and lap 185.
For the final time this season, we will be looking at the top-5 drivers in odds.
The Odds
Tell me if you’ve heard this on an Almanac entry before this: Kyle Larson comes into this weekend as the betting favorite to win the race.
Larson (+400) rides the high of winning the closest race in NASCAR history and being the most recent winner at Darlington, taming the track in last year’s Southern 500.
In 12 starts at the Lady in Black, Larson owns a 9.4 average finish, 6 top-5s, and 8 top-10s. His three stage wins at the track are tied for second-highest amongst the Cup field, and his 107 stage points place him in third. Yung Money tamed Darlington last year and looks to double up this weekend.
As Kyle Larson is ubiquitous to the top spot, Denny Hamlin (+500) sits right behind him. The #11 SportClips pilot sails into one of his best venues on the calendar where he holds a series-high four victories.
With 10 laps to go, the Virginia native wheeled his way to the front and looked poised for his fourth win of the year, but a late caution and a poor final restart dropped him from P1 to P5.
Denny knows better than anyone in the field about how to traverse this treacherous track. It’s time to shrink the all-star field next week by taking yet another win in what is shaping up to be a special season.
His teammate Martin Truex Jr. (+650) bore down on the #11 car in the waning laps, reaching second place before the final caution. Trapped behind row 1, Truex settled for third despite running side-by-side with Chase Elliott to the finish.
The 2017 champion annihilated the competition in the 2021 Goodyear 400, leading 248 of 293 laps en route to his second victory at the circuit.
Collecting more stage wins (seven) than any other driver, the second-generation racer needs to throwback to 2017 when the annihilations occurred on a semi-weekly basis.
Next up is William Byron (+750). Byron’s first 11 starts at the track have yielded a stage win and four top-5s, but his crowning achievement came last year by avoiding calamity and surviving a chaotic Overtime finish to land a win in the #24 Axalta Camaro.
The win served as vengeance for the previous spring when Joey Logano gave him the business coming to the white flag, dropping him from the lead down to 13th when he took the checkered flag.
Byron’s wins lead is being threatened by Larson and Hamlin; it is time for Byron to take control of this weekend and bring home a win for the Sam Bass-designed “FireStorm” paint scheme.
Tyler Reddick (+750) rounds out DraftKings’ top-5 in odds, and after coming up short to Larson last Labor Day, Reddick wants to take his Tim Richmond-inspired car to winner’s circle.
The second-year 23XI driver starts his 10th race at the Track Too Tough To Tame on the back of 3 top-5s and 4 top-10s, logging over 5 stage points per race as well as an 11.3 average finish.
Recognizing the opportunity to pit his #45 Toyota Camry at the top of the scoring pylon for the second time, my eyes will be on Reddick, hungry to rebound from his pedestrian result in last week’s race in a big way.
Writer’s Pick
I’m going to stop being stubborn this week and side with the oddsmakers for once. Kyle Larson will win Sunday’s Goodyear 400.
The site of Terry Labonte’s last Cup Series triumph, Larson throws back to the two-time champion with a HendrickCars scheme inspired by Labonte’s Corn Flakes car from the late-90s.
Larson’s record at Darlington speaks for itself. Averaging a top-10 at Darlington is frankly other-worldly. I believe that Larson’s win in last year’s Southern 500 opens the flood gates for the Elk Grove native to go back-to-back in a tango with the Lady in Black.
(Top Photo Credit: Fox Sports 1)
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